I disagree here. I get your mister moneybags being able to live anywhere and your preference is the only deciding factor but some are taking cost into consideration. Paying for commute would cause businesses to take location into account for profitability in terms of employee time. It would make sense then for a company to even provide a benefit like a subsidized loan for property closer to the work.
Comment on The time and expense of commuting is theft, if that job can be done from home.
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The implication of this is that if that job can’t be done from home, it’s not theft. So the guy making pretty decent money in an office job that could be done at home should get compensated for their commute, but the sandwich artist making far less should not because that can’t be done at home?
And before we start saying that everyone should have their commute compensated, that has a lot of baggage to it too. I live in the suburbs. I chose to live there knowing there was a trade-off between having more house for the money, but also spending more time in my car to get anywhere. If I were searching for a job, I wouldn’t want to be passed over for it because of the longer commute time I was expecting to have from my own choice in where to live. And let’s say I decided to move 3 hours away to be closer to my in-laws or something. But don’t worry boss, I’ll keep working here! I just won’t be in the office for more than 2 hours a day unless you want to pay me overtime. That’s… A little ridiculous.
HubertManne@piefed.social 14 hours ago
spongebue@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Coming in hot with my personal financial situation, eh? Nice. For what it’s worth a major reason I was able to buy the home I have is because we’ve been here over a decade - bought just as the crash started to recover. The last thing I want to do is take a “fuck you, I’ve got mine” attitude but that doesn’t mean I can’t point out giant issues with ideas people are coming up with. You’re welcome to pick apart those arguments, but if you feel the need to go after me personally instead, maybe you should think about why that is.
Like when you bring up taking location into account for an office location. I live on one side of the metro area, many of my coworkers live elsewhere. Take a company with enough people working somewhere, and their “average” location will probably end up near the middle of the city - more than likely a downtown area. Which brings us right back to where we started.
What’s more, everything you say may theoretically work for one person going to one workplace from one home. What about a married couple who work in entirely different places? If one person has a job in (for example) Omaha, NE and the other in Lincoln, that couple could conceivably live in between those two cities and each have a sorta long but doable commute. If a company were to “provide a benefit like a subsidized loan for property closer to the work” (you mean like a mortgage?) that would not only be insane for that random shop with 3 employees (not all business owners are automatically in the <1%) but it would put that employee’s partner at a disadvantage by making them have a longer commute.
HubertManne@piefed.social 13 hours ago
I apologize if it felt like a personal attack. It was more dripping sarcasm. But the reason for the employees being so randomly located is because there is no incentive from the employer. Where couples work is often influenced by where the other partner works unless you are in the enviable position where both have great jobs. So when someone gets an incredible opportunity on the other side of the country the other spouse does not stay with their job and take a flight to commute each day. They look for work closer to that great opportunity. Similarly someone married to someone in the military which ironically does have incentives to live close by.
spongebue@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
You’re talking about giant differences in location (cross-country) which, of course, would need some hard decisions to be made. I’m talking about realistic compromises that may have to be made between a couple with very different work locations in the same general area. When I talked about Lincoln vs Omaha, NE, those two cities are an hour apart. But could be a 30-minute commute in opposite directions for each. Maybe one person works in downtown Chicago, while the other works in the O’Hare airport. Maybe people work in two different boroughs of NYC. If the employer incentived an employee to live nearby, what about their family who works across town? Things crumble apart with that.
november@lemmy.vg 1 day ago
Then how about the employer gets to pick one of two options: Either compensate for a reasonable commute, or pay a wage that allows the employee to live within walking distance?
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Arguably there is an average commute time baked into the wage already along with other expenses people have in life. I’m not sure it needs to be itemized out as its own thing.
And this also assumes an IMO flawed assumption that working from home is entirely expense-free. I have a decent work area in my home. If I didn’t, that space could be used for another kid’s bedroom. Or a craft room for the wife. Or a dedicated Lego room. Or a sex dungeon. Maybe some of those things can be paired up with an office easily enough, but that’s my choice, not my employer’s. Plus there are other day to day costs, like the electricity to run my equipment, the Internet connection I probably would have had in the 21st century but technically don’t have to, heating/cooling costs… You get the idea.
binomialchicken@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Choose a house with 1 extra room, courtesy of your WFH savings.
An itemized cost paid straight by your employer will have the effect of encouraging them to waste less of your time with a commute. They might try to hire locally, might pay for moving expenses, might keep you out of rush hour traffic, might be worried about keeping you late such that now you’re driving on overtime, might actually align their concerns with the planet’s by reducing all the oil going literally up in flames to transport people around to do knowledge work in a cubicle.
spongebue@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
You’re not totally off-base there
When WFH is an option. Where it isn’t (eg, the sandwich dude)…
I have a really hard time seeing this actually happening in practice, especially on low-level jobs. Or people who live with their family (of whom others work elsewhere). Or when you say “hire locally” I say “can’t get a damn job in my field because I don’t live nearby and moving would take my wife away from her job”
november@lemmy.vg 1 day ago
You brought up fast food workers in your first comment only to then make this one all about office workers, how come?
spongebue@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Because I’m talking about different things: paying for commute times for jobs that could be done at home, and paying for commute times in general.